IT’S always good to think you were there at the start of something big, at the vanguard of a new movement.
Dedicated readers of my diary (a group now much diminished in number since the death of my dear mother last autumn) may recall how I once followed the punk group The Damned.
In my all-too-brief career as this great journal’s rock correspondent, I reminisced about their Three Years of Anarchy, Chaos and Destruction in the UK tour. It was the late 1970s and it felt as if Britain had moved beyond awful monotone and was finally living in colour.
I soon jumped off that particular bandwagon; it seemed incompatible with my new ambition to become a soldier.
The Damned, by the way, are now 40 years into the same tour. Apart from the odd local hotspot, incidents of anarchy, chaos or destruction in the UK have been low over that period. That said, current events might suggest that the wait is finally over.
My next chance to be involved in something important came a decade later. I was in a vanload of recently graduated business-school students racing from Fontainebleau to Prague in December 1989 to see Václav Havel inaugurated as Czechoslovakia’s new president.
We arrived in time to join vast crowds shouting ‘Havel na hrad’ and it felt that we were part of a new and better Europe.
Denne historien er fra July 24, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra July 24, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning
